Chuck Ward

Posted: Thursday, Jul 3rd, 2014

April 15, 1926-June 26, 2014

TACOMA, Wash. – Chuck Ward, age 88, passed peacefully June 26, 2014 at his Pioneer Place “home” near Tacoma. He’s again happily patrolling the back roads of Wyoming keeping nature and humans in proper alignment.

Chuck was born in Cheyenne on April 15, 1926 to Joe and Helen Ward. He attended school in LaGrange, graduating in 1944. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps until 1946 and then went on to attend the University of Montana

In 1951, Chuck began his 30-year career with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. He started as a game warden in Lusk, Wheatland and Torrington. For a brief time, he worked in Cheyenne as an education assistant. Chuck later became the game warden in Casper, call sign GF-41.

Over the next 20 years, he became the voice for the Game and Fish, doing radio programs five nights a week on KTWO and KVOC radio stations. In addition, he became “Mr. Game and Fish” to nearly everyone in the state through his bi-weekly game and fish reports on KTWO TV.

As a game warden, Chuck was tenacious. He was known to be out checking hunters and fishermen when they least expected to encounter a warden. As a warden, he had his finger on the pulse of both wildlife and the public, and he applied that knowledge to merge the management of the resource with public demands within his district.

At every opportunity, he continued his education efforts, including providing a conservation program for all ninth-grade students in the Natrona County School District. He also presented a program to all Casper fourth-graders on fur-bearing animals and trapping in conjunction with a chapter in their Wyoming history book on mountain men. In 1966, he received the Conservationist of the Year and Conservation Education awards from the National Wildlife Federation.

Following his retirement from Game and Fish in 1981, Chuck was a science and computer science instructor in the Torrington school system and Eastern Wyoming College. Following retirement from his second career, he and his wife Wilma moved to Puyallup, Wash. to be near their family.

In 2007, Chuck was inducted into the Wyoming Outdoor Hall of Fame, joining such honorees as Theodore Roosevelt, Olaus Murie and Frank Craighead.

He is survived by his wife, Wilma of Puyallup; son Chuck Jr. and wife Jan of Edgewood, Wash.; grandson Brendan and wife Amy of Corvallis, Ore.; grandson Kyle and wife Kate of Tacoma; sister Donna of LaGrange; and sister Marian of Arizona.